


Setting the World On Fire

by BellaKatrina



Series: I Never [3]
Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 18:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21085547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellaKatrina/pseuds/BellaKatrina
Summary: Final part of the "I Never" Series. He feels more than a little bit silly, texting her from the park just up the street from her apartment, but she's not texted or called or anything since those obscene messages she'd sent before they'd arrived at the bar, and he's not sure if he's still invited to stop by or not.





	Setting the World On Fire

He feels more than a little bit silly, texting her from the park just up the street from her apartment, but she's not texted or called or anything since those obscene messages she'd sent before they'd arrived at the bar, and he's not sure if he's still invited to stop by or not.

_Everything okay? Did you make it home safe and sound? _

He stops and thinks about it before he sends it; if she's not alone and Allie sees it, he can play it off as being concerned about her safety, which is true. Even if she doesn’t want to see him any more tonight, it's an innocuous message.

He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding when she responds.

_Yep. I'll buzz you in when you get here. See you in a few?_

It's hard to tell tone from text, but she doesn't seem annoyed with him. He tells himself he's being overly doubtful, that they'd parted not even thirty minutes earlier on good terms, but he knows that whatever this is between them is _good_ – better than good actually – and he's determined not to do anything to fuck it up.

_At the park, be there in two._

Roman's lost in thought as he runs towards her apartment, and is very pleasantly surprised when she's waiting for him at the entrance. She greets him with a kiss, and he's a bit surprised by how strongly she tastes of tequila; he knew she'd been drinking, but had thought that maybe she hadn't had quite that much as she’d seemed almost sober at the bar. It's almost enough to give him a contact high, getting drunk in truth off of her kiss. The fact that she's waiting outside makes him pause just long enough to remember her message about him taking her up against the alley wall, but he's not going to do that, not like this. He hopes she suggests it again some other night, it's a fantasy he wouldn't mind playing with at some point. Instead, he breaks off the kiss reluctantly and asks "Let's take this inside?"

He doesn't say anything about it until after they've made it upstairs to her apartment. As she locks up the door, he heads into the kitchen and gets down a glass, filling it with water and then stirring in a pinch of salt and baking soda. She kicks off her shoes next to the door, and then pads into the kitchen. He hands her the water. "Drink."

"You sound just like Allie and Tash earlier." She smiles, taking the glass and putting it down on the counter next to him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest.

He steps back, and hands the glass back to her. "Drink it, Patty. I'm going to fix you something to eat – you need food too. Sweet or savory?"

She presses herself up on her toes to kiss him again, murmuring "Allie's talk of chocolate sauce got me thinking - if you want, you can lick it off of me, that sounds like _fun_. Or we can see if Allie was right about you and the chocolate sauce, if you'd prefer a rather chocolate-y blow job. I can certainly think of something sweet I wouldn't mind enjoying in my bed.

His mouth goes dry again, and he has to remind himself that that won't be happening until she sobers up a bit. "Yeah, I bet you can." He smacks a quick kiss against her lips, then spins them around and lifts her up onto the counter where she'll be out of the way while he fixes her some banana pancakes. He figures it's fast and probably the healthiest thing he can manage from the pitiful offerings she has in her fridge and cupboards. "We really need to go to the store, you have almost nothing to eat here. This is almost as bad as what happens when Kurt and I leave Jane alone for more than a day!"

"I'm not that bad." She frowns. "I honestly don't know how Jane didn't die of malnutrition before she married Kurt."

"You little hypocrite." He grins, teasing her. "Tash told me about the time you passed out because you thought something called 'go-gurt' was an appropriate meal." He grabs a bowl, peels the only ripe banana she has, and starts mashing it.

Patty giggles. "If that's all she's told you, I'm going to count myself lucky."

She doesn't say anything while he mixes the rest of the batter, waiting until he's starting to heat up the butter. "You and Tash are close, aren't you?"

"Yeah." He's distracted by the fact that her only frying pan's incredibly dented. "What did you _do_ to this poor pan? It looks like you used it to bash in someone's head. By the way, Tash told me to tell you 'hi'." He realizes his mistake as soon as the words come out of his mouth, and he looks up at her, somewhat scared of what her reaction's going to be.

She just laughs, which he's not expecting. "Yeah, I figured she would guess we're together. Blame her and tequila for those horrible, embarrassing texts, by the way. She was texting some guy and reading them out loud as she did; it kinda inspired me. Oh, by the way, in case you missed the subtext earlier, which I'm assuming you did because you _always_ do, Allie thinks you and Tash are fooling around."

"_What_?!" That stuns him; he hadn't realized that's what they were arguing about. He'd figured Allie had some sort of guess about Tash's love life and had only dragged him into it just to see if he could get info out of Tash that she couldn't. "Allie thinks _what_?!" He immediately starts apologizing, even though he knows he's not done anything wrong. "Patty, no, please don't think I'd ever do that to you, I'm so sorry for whatever I said or did that would ever give anyone that impression, she's probably my closest friend after Jane and Kurt, but she's _just_ a friend and Reade would kill me and…"

She hops off the counter and silences him with a deep kiss, fisting his T-shirt collar in her left hand and holding tightly to the waistband of his pants with her right. At first, he's torn between panicking about the Tash thing and making sure that he gets the pan off the heat before the butter burns, but after a few seconds, his brain shuts off and all he can think about is never letting her go and maybe exploring a little to see if she'd told the truth about the lack of panties. He lifts her back up onto the counter, but this time steps closer to her, into the space created when she wraps her legs around his hips. She breaks the kiss long enough to pull the T-shirt off over his head and tossing it out of the way, before bringing her lips to the delicate skin just under his earlobe and then nibbling at the lobe.

Roman's only somewhat aware that something's changed from before, that something is somehow different, but he can't figure out what – that is, not until the fire alarm goes off and he realizes the 'something different' was smoke. He immediately lets go of her and spins around to look at the stove, where his T-shirt is going up in flames. Thinking quickly, he grabs a pair of tongs and pulls the T-shirt off the eye and moves it over to the sink.

When he finally has the flames doused and looks back over at Patty, she's laughing so hard he doesn't know how she's not slipped off the counter. She takes one look at him, then starts singing. _"Come on baby, light my fire."_

Before he knows it, he's laughing with her. She slides back down to a standing position, then hugs him. He rests his forehead against hers, and they continue giggling for a minute. She finally pulls back, then reaches over and turns off the stove. "No more cooking tonight." She grabs his hand, and tries to lead him out of the kitchen and to her bedroom.

He hesitates. "If you want me to stay, I can sleep on the couch tonight, but I'll understand if you tell me to leave."

"You're not sleeping on the couch, don't be silly." She says.

"Okay." He nods, understanding what she's not saying. He has to try to apologize one more time, at least. "I'm sorry again about the whole Tash thing, and I really do hope you know that I would never do that to you." He steps into the living room and grabs his jacket off the couch; hopefully everyone will be asleep at the Weller apartment and there won't be any awkward questions about why he's shirtless.

She looks at him like he's no longer speaking any language she can understand. "Are you _leaving_?"

"You said I wasn't sleeping on the couch." He shrugs. "I get it."

"I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone." She shakes her head. "I know I'm drunk, but I'm not _that_ drunk. I should be able to follow a simple conversation. What's going on? I don't want you to leave."

"I'm not going to take advantage of you like this, I should leave." He'd known from the second she initiated that tequila-infused kiss that he wouldn't be having sex with her tonight, and he's okay with it. There will be other nights.

She looks at him, mouth agape. "Are you _seriously_ leaving because you don't want to fuck me? What the hell sort of jackass move is _that_?"

"No!" He wonders how he's managed to screw this up so badly. "You're had a bit too much to drink to consent, and I'm not going to do anything you wouldn't want to do sober, and I know you don't want me staying when I'm not of use to you!"

Patty's clearly stunned, and he thinks that there's a good chance that he's just made things even worse. She sits down on the couch, staring at him. "Is that why you always leave before I wake up, because you think that I don't want you here? Do you _actually_ think I'm just _using_ you?"

He rubs the back of his neck, not sure what to say to get out of this conversation. "You're not using me. I understand you're not looking to date me seriously. It's okay. I'm okay with waiting until you let me know you want me and then leaving when you don't any more. It's better than not being with you at all."

"_Roman_." Patty's mouth is hanging open. "Oh, honey, _no_. No, that's not… how on earth did you get that impression?"

He shrugs. "Don't you remember telling me to leave you alone that first time I texted you about coming over?"

She looks at him blankly; it clearly didn't make as big an impression on her as it did him.

Pulling up his phone, he shows her the text; he'd taken a screenshot of it as a reminder of the boundaries she'd set.

_Can you please just leave me alone? I'm busy – I'll let you know when I'm not. Come over then. _

"So that's why you never text or call me without some good reason like Kurt telling you to? Roman, I don't remember it, but I'm sure it had to be one night when I was working late and on the verge of some sort of breakthrough or breakdown. I certainly didn't mean you had to follow it as a relationship rule!" She rubs at her eyes. "I thought it was just that I'm never your first pick when you want company. I thought you had other women who are hotter or skinnier or kinkier or something and…"

"I told you last night, you're the only one." He reminds her. "There's not been anyone else this entire time."

"Yeah, but I didn't believe you when you said that. It's just something guys say, sometimes. You actually mean it, though, don't you?" She takes a deep breath, then rubs at her eyes again. "You know what, I'm really not up to this tonight. Let's just table this conversation until the morning. We'll both feel better with some sleep – just sleep – and we'll talk then. It sounds like we definitely need to have a long conversation. Is that good for you?"

That really doesn't sounds like it's good for him, but he nods any how. He doesn't remember much of his time with Kat, nothing like this happened with Blake, and there's not been anyone that stayed for longer than a weekend since her – not until his Patty. From the few stories he's heard from Kurt about Allie and his other women before Jane, he's fairly certain those are the words that they used to initiate conversations where they dumped Kurt. Well, in Allie's case, dump him multiple times and tell him about Bethany and a whole host of other problems, but the common thread being it never ended well for Kurt. He has a sick feeling in his stomach, and wonders if it wouldn't be best just to go home and hope she's in a better mood tomorrow.

She doesn't give him the chance to attempt to leave again, just takes his hands and leads him back into her bedroom. He doesn't exactly know what to do, he's never been in her room except for sex, and not always even then; he sits down on the edge of her bed and just looks at her as she uses some sort of wipe to remove her makeup. He's still just looking as she grabs an oversized night shirt out of a drawer.

"Unzip me?" She glances over her shoulder at him, and he guesses that maybe being invited to stay to sleep-just-sleep won't be all that different from being invited over to not sleep. She starts to shimmy out of the dress, and he's not sure if he's supposed to watch or if he's supposed to look away, since she's not stripping for his enjoyment, but rather just to undress. This night is not at all going the way he'd thought it would, and he's fairly certain she's going to dump him just as soon as she's had enough sleep to form a coherent thought and had a few hours to contemplate how best to go about it.

"Are you planning on wearing that to bed?" Her voice calls him out of his reverie. "I mean, you're welcome to, but those jeans are going to be pretty uncomfortable for you in a few hours. The socks too, most likely."

"I don't know what to do." When he looks up at her, she's already wearing her night shirt, has braided her hair, and is turning back the bed. "Do you want me to wear boxers or do you want me to be naked or what?"

"Oh, _Roman_."

He doesn't know why she sounds so sad when she says his name; it sounds like she's on the verge of tears. He somewhat wonders if she's even going to wait until daybreak to let him go.

"What do you normally wear to bed at home?" She asks. "Wear whatever makes you comfortable."

"Pajama bottoms. But if it's hot, boxers, so that's okay?"

"Of course it's okay." She walks over to stand in front of him, then wraps her arms around his shoulders and hugs him close before kissing his forehead and rubbing the back of his neck. "Although for the future, if you like pajama bottoms better, you should probably keep some here, and some spare T-shirts too. I'll try not to set any more of your clothes on fire, but you never know." She grins at him, whatever melancholy mood she was in before seems to vanish. "Your toothbrush is in the top left drawer in the bathroom, if you want to wash up a bit before bed."

"My toothbrush?" He knows it's probably a dumb question, but he honestly doesn't know what she's talking about. There's been a few times that she's let him use a spare toothbrush to brush up after a meal or snack before they got down to business, but as far as he's aware, he doesn't have a toothbrush of his very own.

"You're killing me, Roman, you know that, right?"

There are tears back in her eyes, but she brushes them away without saying anything about them, so he hopes that she's not too upset with him. She must see that he's going to continue to just sit there, so she grabs his hand again and leads him into the bathroom. She opens the drawer and hands him that spare toothbrush, then grabs hers off the holder on the sink. It's weirdly domestic to stand side-by-side brushing their teeth like that, and oddly intimate; it reminds him of Jane and Kurt, which further emphasizes just how strangely the night's going. He finishes brushing and goes to put the brush back in the drawer, but she takes it from him and puts in one of the empty holes in the holder.

"There, no reason you can't leave yours out on the counter with mine." She flees from the bathroom before he can respond.

Going to bed is one of the weirdest experiences of his life. By the time he comes out of the bathroom, she's already crawled into bed and is lying there, waiting on him, with just the bedside lamp still on. He's not sure what he's supposed to do, and just stands there until she pats the empty side of the bed, and he awkwardly lies down on his back and pulls the covers up. He waits until she turns off the lamp, thinking maybe she'd give him some clue as to what she expects, but she doesn't say anything, just curls up on her side, facing away from him; he wonders if that's a bad sign, that she doesn't seem to want to even look at him. Unused to sleeping on his back like this, he can't quite get comfortable enough to fall asleep.

Thinking back over the night and some of the things she's said about the bad assumptions he's made when trying to figure out what she wants, he decides that maybe she'd be okay with him spooning her and if she isn't, she'll let him know. He turns over onto his side, and curls his body around hers, tentatively resting his hand on her hip; she doesn't say anything, but laces her fingers with his and pulls their hands around to rest over her stomach to settle more firmly into his embrace. She pushes her legs back against his, letting one foot rest in between his.

It takes him no time to fall asleep after that, despite his misgivings about what exactly she hopes to accomplish with their morning talk. He gets the vague impression of her sleepily muttering something as he drifts off, but he can't make it out.


End file.
